local conditions

It makes me incredibly happy to see a work like Chandler O'Leary's Local Conditions: One Hundred Views of Mt. Rainier (At Least), not only because I love artist books, but also simply because this is such a great example of an incredibly ambitious, beautifully designed and executed one.

As you can see, Local Conditions is not your ordinary hardcover artist book:

Illustrated, designed, printed and bound by Chandler O’Leary, through freak snowstorms, record heat, and a thousand gentle rains in Tacoma, Washington. Each of the book’s 120 image flats is illustrated and compiled from sketches, photographs and data collected in person, on location, from September 2008 to October 2010. All text and images were letterpress printed in Hokusai’s indigo ink, down the street at Springtide Press. Images and topographic map patterns are hand-drawn and watercolored.

(Via poppytalk)